Sapan: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Systems Plus' Enabling Digital podcast series. Today, we're diving into the evolving world of customer service, where AI, automation, and the human touch all intersect. Our guest, Paul Deaux II, brings over 16 years of leadership experience in the call center space and currently serves as the Director of Customer Services at Mammoth Holdings. With a track record of building customer service operations across industries like HVAC, plumbing car washes and telecom, Paul specializes in helping businesses integrate modern technology while maintaining a personal touch. We'll explore how AI and automation are reshaping customer interactions, the challenges of balancing efficiency and personalization and what the future holds for customer service. Paul, welcome to the show it's really great to have you!
Paul: Thank you it's a pleasure to be here. I appreciate the great intro.
Sapan: When you look at your life from the standpoint of the years that have gone by and your accomplishments, it's pretty humbling. So let's kick off the conversation and if you can give us a little bit of an overview of what exactly that you are doing currently at Mammoth in the current role as director of customer service and maybe help us understand how you got there.
Paul: The journey in Mammoth right now is the journey that I've taken in many other organizations over time. And that is, we as a country have a journey that we're undertaking where we're moving a lot of smaller entities into larger entities. And as a part of that, customer service is becoming a massive concentrated effort. You see it in both the blue collar workspaces and the white collar workspaces throughout our country and as we grow in single entity businesses, as we absorb in these other entities whether it be car washes or plumbing companies, HVAC companies, smaller telecommunication companies, things of that nature; it becomes native that we have to build large customer service entities to handle that and let's be honest, there are very few companies in the world that want to shoulder the responsibility of a million -dollar call center. And so one of the things that I make it possible for a smaller entity that has its sights on growing into the larger entity is making that efficient transition without building the million-dollar call center.
And what that looks like that is both respectful to your customers, your customers' time, and more importantly, to your bottom line.
Sapan: Perfect. So over time, how have you seen the customer service industry evolve?
Paul: Well, let's be honest. It used to be that if you were going to have customer service, and particularly if you're a smaller organization or one that doesn't have a massive pool of talent to pull from, you may have had somebody who was in accounting answer the phone for you. Or, you know, it may have been a member of your family, a spouse or somebody of that nature. Customer service really started out as whoever could get to the phone, particularly with smaller organizations. That person may lack experience in using advanced CRM platforms. They may, and let's be honest, early on, they may have actually lacked experience in using computers. And even to this day with smaller organizations, that is the case. You will encounter companies that carry pretty big names with them may have folks within those organizations that can't use the modern software that is so important to expanding and growing their businesses. So what I've seen is an anxiousness. for our smaller entities, whether it be a plumbing HVAC company, a car wash company, or anything of that nature to really dive into advanced CRM platforms and to get the optimization and the efficiency of those things and the need for exploiting international talent or remote work talent from other parts of the country suddenly skyrockets. In addition, the need is even in my role as a call center director to understand CRM platforms to understand how to manage those and how to direct their construction and customization for individual call centers and individual businesses becomes a super critical thing so in my view customer service has evolved from the bottom to the top and then it's returned that way on the back side. There was a time where you tried to manage every single thing that came down the pipe with a phone call and nowadays most companies manage a significant amount of their business through a bot on a website and kind of getting ahead of myself a little bit here, the technology that we see coming out now I believe is going to transform that future even further. So I've seen a lot of changes and foresee a lot coming in the future.
Sapan: Well, you're absolutely right. But before we sort of delve into the chatbot world, et cetera, one of the things that we're noticing today is a move towards self-service and how is that impacting the way you actually sort of look at customer service. And I presume the self-service is a huge enabler through AI. So maybe if you can start touching upon that.
Paul: If we start at the most advanced version of that conversation, which is to say self-service through AI is kind of the big future for everything. I think self-service has been very primitive in the past. And oftentimes the result of self-service is not the most ideal outcome for your company. Most people who go to a website to cancel their account, cancel their account, right? There's very little effective resistance provided by automated systems online. I'm in process of working with a couple of vendors right now to perfect our version of an AI that will respond in a way that we would ideally see better production out of an AI system far superior than an online bot when it comes to pushing customer retention.
But really, one of the biggest benefits is it's a huge cost saving to have an automated response system. Something as simple as can I change my package? For companies that have a membership process. Can I change my appointment time, if you're an appointment-based company; When are your stores open, and things of that nature; Those are super easy to address with an adequately running chatbot and in the future of AI, potentially with a little conversation and maybe an additional sales pitch that comes along with it. It can be very effective. In my view, the advent of automated customer service has done nothing but improve the bottom line for call center management, but also more importantly, the amount of noise that's in the background and the speed in which your customer is able to utilize your services.
Sapan: Right. Actually, it's a very interesting point. You are right. From a self-service point of view, if I'm looking to cancel, I will cancel. Whereas if I have to talk to somebody... the opportunity to possibly save that account still exists. It's actually a brilliant point. So to that, do you see, for example, the move towards self-service as a dangerous one, or is there a better way to make it work? And I presume AI might be the answer, but I'll let you answer that.
Paul: You know, the person who fears the development of technology becomes the dinosaur that they dig up later right? I think those of us who are in our early 40s and 50s and so forth have seen a significant amount of technology advent that was 20 years ago 30 years ago that was what was going to end the middle class in America or in our countries right. Individually, I think really for AI we're looking to focus the concentration of work and the type of skilled work that must be done in order to ensure that our customers are serviced properly so I don't need an elite diversion of a customer service rep to accomplish when the store hours are And AI will give me the ability to accomplish when the store hours are and quickly provide something as an upgrade option or a sales option or a marketing option in that conversation that doesn't expend the time of a level three technician attempting to get your phone working again or something of that nature. And for me, the future of customer service is a marriage between elite team of highly qualified, highly talented, very servant minded customer service individuals complemented with an AI that deals with the noise and the things that could be dealt with in the past by people that you didn't necessarily have to have doing those particular roles I would rather train a group of people to be the best of the best and have them in my staff and dedicated to have those conversations. When the chances of losing the customer are the greatest and have a simple AI bot resolve the quick and easy transactions on the backside that just become noise in the day-to-day operations. And in that becomes the efficiency of answering that customer who were in danger of losing call at an earlier time.
Sapan: Right. So that's actually a very practical example of how AI can actually enable the whole customer service experience. Are there, in your mind, what are some of the other sort of table stakes examples that are taking shape in the industry today which leverage AI?
Paul: Well, for me, I've got a daughter in her 20s, and I know for a fact that I'd be a fool if I said anything that has been written in our education system in the last four years hasn't involved AI in some way. Chatgpt and things of that nature are becoming an extremely prominent entity within those fields but I'm going to tell you that within that becomes even something as simple as a business email or marketing email right and so here in Mammoth Holdings we directly partner with our marketing. The customer service partnered up with marketing and using AI systems to create marketing and things of that nature is the next driving force in the future. It saves a tremendous amount of time that can be used for innovating new ideas and strategies within the marketing field.
To create those simple marketing patterns and things of that nature that you need, the emails, the images, and things of that nature, to get those things out faster. And ultimately, I know that what we'll see in the future is AI assistants, and we're already starting to see those now, that can be a part of your day -to -day work. Let's be honest, nobody's going to pay an assistant .anymore. But really, I think Microsoft hit it and just never had the technology to go forward.
I'm looking for an AI bot as an assistant that is more intelligent than the paperclip that used to pop up on Windows 95. You know what I mean? And I think that's really the wave of the future for all of us is to have that AI assistant that is a combination of chat, GPT, and these other entities. When I turn to it and say, compose an email. So it's the 1950s again, and I'm turning to my assistant and saying, let's compose an email and dictate that email to my computer and have it ready and approve and send. I think really we're going to see an advancement in removal of laborious tasks, both from customer service into marketing and into executive level care on a daily basis going forward.
Sapan: Right. The whole call center piece is one part of the customer experience, right? Customer service, et cetera. There's a lot of other aspects that deal with the customer experience. And typically, the sense I get is a customer picks up a phone usually when there's a problem. Otherwise, they don't call, right? And that's like, well, it's a thankless job, I presume. So how do you manage that aspect of it and how do you make sure that based on the way the customer is sort of engaging with that initial call that's coming in what is the technology that you're leveraging or the AI that you're leveraging to ensure that it gets to a live human quickly versus getting it solved through the AI bot or whatever the case may be.
Paul: Well in call center world we have something that we call availability when it comes to the ability for you to get and contact somebody. And availability is almost entirely based on staffing, which staffing is money. And if we're really honest for a minute, it's just money, right? The number of people I have available to answer a phone at any given time is a dollar sign. And that is where availability comes from. If my customer picks up the phone and calls, if there's a rep on the other end of that line ready to take that call, it happens.
This is where AI becomes a great benefit. So in theory, you can staff to the point where you have enough people to manage the call volume, but it becomes inappropriate for your bottom line. So balancing a profit and loss statement in a call center is a trick. And one of the biggest tricks, just like in the rest of car washing, is labor, right? And managing that labor. One of the tricks that I intend to utilize going forward is backing up my call center staff with an AI on the front end and on the back end, right? So you really want to be able to direct as much of that volume away from the call center by using AI systems or online chatbot systems to very quickly manage those things through self -service portals and whatnot. But a neat trick that you can do is if you do have an AI hooked into your system. If a customer goes online and attempts to use a chatbot to resolve their issue and is unable to get a resolution you just put a big green button there that says talk to someone now when they punch that button they're hooked directly into the AI system which if you played your cards right should be a measure smarter than your chatbot. And in that becomes the ability for customers to feel super comfortable with being talked to and interacted with at a higher level. You will never, without managing your staffing needs, end up with a call center that is cost efficient.
And ultimately, if we're really honest with ourselves, you need a call center that can function no matter what the economy is doing around you at any point in time. And so AI is the trip of the future if you will for that in that I can have an infinite number of customer service reps handle an infinite number of basic responsibilities very quickly and then again maintain that core group that can be in a more available state to handle higher end issues.
Sapan: So let's talk about some of the calls that do come in where the AI agent is able to resolve the situation, right? Let's say I'm a customer. I call in. Usually that prompt asks me a few questions. I answer. My query gets resolved. Great. I move on. If it doesn't, then I'll ask for a representative, and hopefully it'll get me to one. The usual happy path, as we can call it. How do you collect that data to ensure that if the customer is calling in time and again? The AI is actually solving the right problem- question number one and question number two is- AI is able to detect the pattern right so that you can correct it ahead of time or be a little bit proactive. I mean, that's the real benefit. That's the real power of AI, right? I mean, I can have AI and it's solving the problem every single time, but then the customer keeps calling in, calling in, calling in, same problem. At some point, you know, you're going to lose the customer. So I'm trying to understand how you're creating the predictiveness, leveraging that data that you're collecting and then fixing it.
Paul: Well, the greatest part about building AIs to handle customer services, people weren't perfect prior to the advent of AI and so what you're referring to happens with people too right and so things such as repeated caller measurements and duplicate call measurements and things of that nature already exist within the systems and the call center management systems that we use on a daily basis we can already see those things so repeat callers is a percentage that you manage against your primary call queue. Obviously going in and tracking those things because humans don't always answer the question correctly has become a thing or that caller may have a behavior that drives them not to accept what has been shown to them, right? Ultimately, there's nothing new that has to be created for AI to measure those things because humanity was imperfect previously.
Sapan: So at least are you seeing resolution of the repeat issues faster with AI or is it the same?
Paul: So it's about the same. And the reason for that is we're still dealing with humanity no matter what we do. And my mama used to tell me all the time, you're the most stubborn human being that has ever come on the face of this earth except for me. And some of us are just born with hard heads. And ultimately, those are my favorite customers because I'm going to find a way to tell them the thing that they need to hear and to build a relationship with them so that they're not going to call back after that. And that only comes from humanity, which is why I go back to my original statement, which is we must have a blended version of these things, right? AI may not be able to address somebody like me who's as hard -headed as an old rock. But if I get somebody on the phone that knows that and works with that and interacts with that, that changes that going forward. So we'll probably never see a day in my lifetime where there will be a complete ability for a call center to be managed through an AI. I'm going to say that and somebody will have the thing out tomorrow.
But ultimately, the blending of that, identifying it is very easy. We already have the systems for that. If the AI is repeatedly failing, then the human steps in and takes either reprogramming for that system or intercedes at a human level to ensure that the customer gets the soft touch.
Sapan: Okay, so I'm not going to ask you to give away any of your secret sauce, but how did you sort of evolve your customer contact center into a more integrated contact center with AI? Or how did you basically decide that, yeah, I need to start pushing AI and leveraging it, et cetera? I mean, there must have been some kind of inflection point.
Paul: Well, I think for all of us, I actually started working with AI in the plumbing and HVAC industry. Okay. Really, AI was originally brought up to begin to change behaviors in human phone agents, to bring suggestions up in calls, for easy automation of call results, like we would be able to look at AI tracking printout of different calls and read through that for certain behaviors and things of that nature. Originally you just about would have been crazy not to implement AI in your call center. It became an easier way of tracking behaviors which lowered the amount of overhead staff required in order to cover a select group of reps you may have required four or five or six coaches frontline leaders in order to manage a group of individuals but as we got AI implemented tools we could slowly lower the number of those frontline leaders or spread them out better and then still get the same production or in the case that we had to spread the ones that we have a higher level of production for behavior tracking and things of that nature so, you know, really the call centers were one of the first groups in my knowledge to begin to use AI for changing the behaviors of people right. And then you really started to see the basic chatbots and things of that nature start to come out.
Working with other organizations, for instance, there's a third -party outsource agency called Dexcom that's got a really neat AI bot that they're working with right now. And you'll find other organizations close to the car wash industry, such as Renster, currently in production, and Ujet are currently in production of AI bots. And those are really clever items that they're working through. They're only slightly more advanced in their current form than would be an online chat bot, but the thing about them is they've started to sound more natural. And let's be honest, on a phone, we interact through inflection and tone. And so now that we have AI chatbots that have inflection in tone when they talk to you, it definitely starts to make a positive impact on that customer experience.
You must be aware of the limitations of the technology that you have to access, and you must be 10 % smarter than that technology in order to be successful with it. The trick- if I was a young call center director talking to an older call center director about making a change in their call center to adapting and bringing in AI I'd say the first thing you have to do is teach people not to be afraid of it, the second thing you have to do is teach yourself not to be afraid of it and that will help you get through whatever system or whatever setup you need to do to optimize your use of it. So it just comes down to getting in deep with it and practicing.
Sapan: So to that point, what do you see as the top two or three sort of customer service related areas where AI does really well and where AI fails? And when I say AI, I include the chatbot and the whole service as part of that.
Paul: Absolutely. So really, if most organizations that I've worked for when we sat down and looked at the effectiveness of an online chat bot it's great at handling volume right. You can get five six ten twenty thirty thousand self -care processes run through an online chat bot real quick. It doesn't do anything to retain customers effectively and I've seen that across the board on in multiple industries right. It doesn't give you any real accurate tracking.
When you look at proximity bias, choosing something at the top or the bottom, a lot of times you get a report that is at the top or the bottom. A lot of times with cancellations, people will always just choose the first thing on the list. So you don't know why they canceled, right? You just know that they canceled. So the chatbots are really notoriously bad at that type thing. And that's, for me, the reason why we must eventually have all of our online systems to do with cancellation or anything of that nature start with an interaction with a very simple chatbot that ends with an interaction with an AI. Where if I say I want to disconnect my services, I end up talking to an intelligent AI that can do a good offer. Hey, you know, I don't want to see you leave. What about this? Let me dangle this piece of candy in front of you and tell you how shiny and pretty it is, right? And I think the hole that we have to patch with online self -care resources is keeping the customer more efficiently as well as tracking data more efficiently with those things. And it would definitely make difference if somebody said to the customer, hey, why are you really leaving us today? You're probably going to get a bigger answer from that customer or a better answer other than just because you're the number one choice on the list today.
Sapan: Yeah, I've noticed that a lot of times the question is asked in a positive way, like what could we have done to keep you versus what did we do wrong? And that sort of creates a very different tone and discussion. I presume you're touching on a similar point, saying that it's about asking– the intelligent AI asking the right questions so that you can try to dangle that nice piece of candy, versus – exactly as you said, if I want to cancel, if I'm seeing a list, I'm going to choose the first or the second and then move on with life.
Paul: That's exactly right. And you don't want to throw spaghetti at a wall when it comes to your bottom line and customer retention. When we're balancing a profit and loss statement for customer retention, it's super important that we have a trackable offer for how we're doing with customer retention. It's one of the first things I build when I build a call center in cooperation with my marketing departments is I need an offer that is trackable. that we can always figure out how effective we are at retaining our customers. And so whether it's a human or an AI making that offer, the stickiness of that becomes the measure of your effectiveness and retention. And so if our little chatbot online is not really good at making an offer that is customized to that particular customer, The great thing about your AI bots is they detect, because they're going to be communicating directly with your CRM platform, they can detect the package that the customer is on and determine a right size or a lower package or a different offer that might tempt that customer to retain better. And we've seen in the past in verticals that customers have responded better to that. They've been more easy to retain through that process.
Or if they flat reject the offer and say, no, I want something else, the bot can say, hold on, let me let you talk to a human being. That's where that call then connects to that internal team. And we get to see the wonder of a well-trained internal customer service team.
Sapan: So let me pull back a little bit. This whole notion- everything is about the 360 degree view of the customer right, where everything from the tools that you use, the service that you offer, the departments that interact with customers, of course you know the area that you handle is one of the big ones and again usually you call in for an issue, you never call in when things are going well right. How do you look at that 360-degree view, and how do you see the whole call center experience as part of that, and how does that fit into the overall, you know, what the trend is today of the whole MarTech piece of your general organizational structure?
Paul: You know, the tale of the 360 -degree view in customer service is as old as time, and it's what we call probing questions, right? Probing to understand how we got to that phone call that day right and obviously CRM platforms give us a lot of visual data and a lot of numbers about what's happening in our customers life we can look very quickly to ascertain.
The old -fashioned tools are still the best ones in the world, though. There's no number on a screen that tells me a bad experience with a human being happened or a bad experience with a service happened. It comes down to opening my mouth and inquiring what's happening. You'll see that even the simplest tools, or excuse me, the most complicated, bots fail at that currently. They're not good at probing in to understand. They're not good at determining the emotion of the person that's on the phone and what the inflection in their voice means. One of my favorite thing to do when testing out AI bots is to challenge it by saying something completely ridiculous and seeing how it responds and so for your customer you know on the front side of that is that may actually be a cue that something is going on.
I'll kind of give you a case in point I have a very a fabulous associate who works for me she is located in the Philippines and the customer on her line said something in her native tongue out of annoyance. My rep picked up on it immediately and angled her approach using that particular interaction to be successful with the customer that doesn't currently exist in any machine system in the entire world so we still look at both in the call center environment- the number that creates that experience but we also have the ability then to probe into our customers experience to relate to the customer in order to find an effective solution to meet that customer's need. It will always be the simplest behaviors that drive the most effective customer interactions.
My call center runs under what's called a last protocol- we listen we acknowledge we provide a solution, and we thank the customer on the way out, that's an old, old, old technique for caring for customers. Nothing has ever changed about that. So it doesn't matter how sophisticated the technology becomes, it's the simplest behaviors that get you there.
Sapan: Nice. Well, we're almost running out of time, but I do have a couple more questions. I can keep talking about this. But I want to touch a little bit on your current role with Mammoth and how, if you could sort of share with our listeners, what are some of the areas that you are tinkering with AI and how you're leveraging it? And then I'll ask you my last question thereafter.
Paul: Absolutely. So Mammoth is, I've just gotten here, right? I'm a pretty new addition to the Mammoth staff. We're in process of exploring AI and the ability of it to connect to the systems, the CRM platforms that we use. So a lot of the AI systems that are available out there in the world are currently not compatible with platforms that they're required to be compatible to in order to do those big customer interactions- changing credit cards, things of that nature. So if you bring an AI in that's not directly set up for your CRM platform you have to make the API connections and things of that nature. So we're currently in the early forms of exploring an AI system for our customer service needs here we've actually sampled several and have decided on one that I won't disclose at this moment but later on if we have a conversation we might actually talk about it a little more with the very goals that we've been talking about here today and that is to ensure that we service as many customers as possible with a more human touch or an actual conversation as opposed to just a chat bot or just a typed response really looking to drive that customer retention number up and ensuring that our customers do hear that offer that we have out there for them. We know for a fact that we can produce an entirely more realistic customer relationship through the AI bots than we can with just the online self -care features. And we know for a fact that we can drive a higher amount of customer retention through a more human-like offer in that workspace.
Sapan: Okay, nice. So let's talk a little bit about the future. So in your opinion, what are the next big trends that you're seeing? In the customer service space in general, not necessarily AI, but just customer service space, that are going to shape the way we deliver customer service. And I mean future as in five, ten years out. I don't mean tomorrow.
Paul: Well, I think what we're going to see is more and more of a push towards either self -produced or customizable CRM platforms, things like HubSpot, where you're able to build out your own specifically designed for your individual customer service set. Some of the ones that I've interacted with in the past that were company designed lacked a lot of ability to see all of the aspects of the company. We really have to marry all of the different parts of the company together so that when we're talking about that 360 customer experience, so that we're having a customer service interaction, we know exactly what the entirety of this particular customer's journey has been. And for instance, one of the things that we're doing is marrying the ability for our marketing department and our CSC department to see what each other is doing and what we're encountering and things of that nature.
Let's be honest for a minute. If you can't have an intelligent conversation about the email that the customer just had in front of them, you're not in the modern era. And I would anticipate we see five, ten years into the future more and more systems that automatically queue up. Heads up for our customer service representatives for our different executives and leaders within the industry for marketing and call center management. I would know I would definitely say something like chat gpt being integrated into any call flow when it comes to a customer interaction to give live updates that are very effective. Those things will be a standard for customer service as well as, what I would call internet at your fingertips. A lot of technical support over the years has been done through Google. I would definitely suspect that we would see phone troubleshooting and computer troubleshooting and general tech troubleshooting representatives have access to AI programs that will allow them to quickly search the whole of the internet database for troubleshooting information and things of that nature.
Sapan: So let me ask you, and I know I told you one last question, but I have one more, if you don't mind. How would- I'm a new organization, very customer service. I may have had some basic customer service. I'm going through a certain level of growth, and now it's all about customer retention. As someone who is moving into that sort of space where from growth into retention, I need to start thinking about tools, strategy etc- what advice would you give to that organization in terms of how to think about customer service and how to sort of start implementing certain high -level strategies?
Paul: Hire a professional first of all. Here's the reality of it. I would not walk into your business and assume that I could do your job just because I might have a basic understanding of it. And we have this massively accelerating need and a technological growth curve that is kind of colliding when it comes to high -level customer service, particularly for smaller organizations.
If you go into Google and search your local plumbing company or your HVAC company or one that is a combination of those two, you're going to find an organization that has to manage a certain amount of call volume on a daily basis. and or they have to manage an amount of messaging on the internet and things of that nature. So most of those companies are going to have to invest in a CRM platform right. They're going to have to invest in a phone system to manage those incoming phone calls, they're going to have to invest in a messaging system to do that, they're going to have to invest in all of those things so if you don't have a professional who can kind of get in with and manage those things from the perspective of experience and whatnot, you're at the of whatever companies decide to sell you their service in that environment. And I've come in a few times just for six or seven months. to just provide perspective and to help people be able to build out what they need.
Yeah, you need two customer service reps. You don't need a call center director. But what you do need is somebody who can talk to your CRM platform, set up that CRM platform,set up those messaging systems, set up that online chat bot and do those things. If you are a small company and you're starting up in that environment, you should consider a professional at that level, not a member of IT, but somebody who does that specifically. as a part of your startup expenses to ensure that you have a high level professional and rapid response to incoming customer requests because it's one of the most important things to getting you on your feet. I was dealing with the CEO of a Roto -Rooter location one time where I set up a customer service division for him. And he was telling me a story about when they first started up, he was answering his own phone at 2 or 3 o 'clock in the morning and then having to go start up work at 1 o 'clock, or excuse me, at 6 o 'clock in the morning then. And I sat there in horror and realized that this man had probably been functioning on three hours of sleep for 20 years of his life. And I think we're at the point now where center director and somebody who builds out call centers for smaller organizations has become a necessary thing and it's not just the ability to manage information systems and reporting systems and things of that nature that needs to be accomplished, but rather the ability to have the foresight to see how it all looks from stage one to if necessary, managing 1 ,000 to 2 ,000 calls a month.
And there are little nuances and tweaks that must be made as you progress up that ladder to ensure that as you bring in new business or your business spikes, you're not caught in a bad situation and not able to accommodate that. And that experience, again, is a good investment to have up front.
Sapan: So you touched on a very important word, investment, right? So how do I go to the board and convince them that this ROI is worth it because it is an investment, right? And as you started off the conversation, it's a cost, it's a balance of cost, but it's a cost nonetheless, and it'll always be seen as that. So how do you create that business case to the board and say, you know what, the ROI is well worth it?
Paul: Show them where they're losing money. Easier said than done, I should say. Well, and most of the time, the interesting thing is most of the time companies will invest in platforms that will allow them to measure loss. Right. They know already where they're losing money. Membership subscription services bleed money because they ultimately lose customers constantly. There are entire industries now dedicated to canceling your subscription services for things, right? And so ultimately the first place you can have impact to a profit and loss statement for an organization and where you should talk to your board is customer retention. and how you can impact customer retention and how it can be measurable and the numbers around that and what impact that can have on the backside. One of the things that I like to do is if I started a company that is at zero, I like to grow based on our ability to continue to feed back money into the company so this amount saves a day is one rep. This amount of saves is two rep. This amount of saves is the first AI. You know what I mean? And you build out based on a balanced P &L. Being able to predict that based on past experience and being able to show that to a board and importantly to get their buy -in is all about the confidence around that particular piece. We know good and well, particularly when it comes to subscription services, that customer retention is the number one thing you must be thinking about and how to make that as cheap as possible. And that's what I always say to people is watch as I put money back into your industry.
Sapan: Fantastic. Paul, thank you so much. It's been a great conversation. I have at least 10 more questions, but I think we are definitely out of time. And I do want to thank you once again for spending this 45 minutes with us. It's been a great conversation.
Paul: Thank you for the opportunity. Have a safe day. My pleasure.
